Luke 22:39-46 Sleeping from Sorrow
Format for Your Devotions
Instructions: Do not read my example devotion until you have completed your own devotional time in the scriptures. Reading my thoughts first may limit your own understanding. Let the Holy Spirit speak to you alone before looking to see what anyone else has to say, whether it is me, a Bible commentary, or a friend. Let God speak to you before you let another person speak to you. I have provided a format, but modify it to fit your needs. For example, I usually combine my application and prayer together talking to God about the application to my own life. You can go through this devotion process mentally, speaking out loud, or in writing as you wish. Don’t worry if you are not following this process exactly. Sometimes, I add extra information and sometimes I emphasize one part more than others. However, you should always think about what you learn about God from this passage.
Step 1: Pray–Ask for the Holy Spirit’s guidance first of all and that God may reveal the lessons that He wants you to have that day. Request that God protect you from Satan’s distractions (and the devil will try to distract you whether it is pinching the baby or putting you to sleep). Ask to see God more clearly as you read and think about the passage.
Step 2: Read the passage–Read to get an overview of the information first. Then start looking at specific parts after the first reading. You may read a larger or smaller section than I have here because you do not have to follow my organization at all.
Step 3: Understand the passage–You can summarize, ask and answer your own questions about the passage, visualize the story, analyze the characters, and relate this passage to other scriptures and personal experiences.
Step 4: What does this reveal about God?–What do you learn about the Father, Son, and/or Holy Spirit from this passage?
Step 5: Apply this to your own life.
Step 6: Prayer
My Example Devotion: December 7, 2018 Luke 22:39-46
Note: In the devotion examples, I leave my questions and thought processes in the text because I am trying to demonstrate that a devotional time is a dialogue with God about what you are reading from His word. As such, any questions or ideas that you have should be explored by talking it out with God. These example devotions are not my attempts to teach you what the meaning of a particular scripture is. They are an attempt to teach you the process of devotions, which is a combination of prayer and Bible study where you explore ideas with God as you read His word.
And going out, according to His custom, He went to the Mount of Olives. And His disciples also followed Him. And when He was at the place, He said to them, Pray that you do not enter into temptation. And He was withdrawn from them about a stone’s throw. And He kneeled down and prayed, saying, Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me. Yet not My will, but Yours be done. And an angel appeared to Him from Heaven, strengthening Him. And being in an agony He prayed more earnestly. And His sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground. And when He rose up from prayer and had come to His disciples, He found them sleeping because of sorrow. And He said to them, Why do you sleep? Rise and pray lest you enter into temptation.
(Understanding the Text) Jesus customarily went to the Mount of Olives. Earlier in Luke it says “And in the days He was teaching in the temple. And in the nights He went out, and lodged in the mount called the Mount of Olives. And all the people came early in the morning to Him in the temple, in order to hear Him” (Luk 21:37-38). During this stay in Jerusalem, Jesus had established a pattern of going to the temple early in the morning and teaching there all day and staying all night on the Mount of Olives. Earlier in the week, this had been a protection in that it was not yet perceived as a pattern, but now Judas could predict where Jesus would be that night, so he was able to lead a group of soldiers to the deserted mountainside to arrest Jesus.
I know from the other gospels that Jesus had left most of the disciples at the entrance to the garden and only taken Peter, James, and John with Him further in. Then, He left them together and went even farther in to pray. Before leaving them, Jesus advised them to pray that they did not give in to the temptation that surrounded them. We always focus on Peter, but this admonishment was for all of them. I wonder if John prayed enough to receive strength so that his temptation was ignored in his effort to follow Jesus. I wonder what James and John’s temptations were. Satan would not have left them alone. Was it fear of death? Maybe, for James. Maybe, James was the first to die because he needed to know that the fear he had given into after Gethsemane would never overcome him again. John’s fear might have been losing people he loved and being alone. That’s why he clung to Peter and later Mary. Maybe, living as long as he did allowed John to understand that even if others that he loved died and even if he was alone, he was never alone because Jesus would not leave him alone. Maybe, Jesus sent him to Mary before He left the courtyard. I never realized before how much John must have hated being alone. I hope that by Patmos, John had learned his lesson, but it may have been on Patmos that John finally learned.
We blame the disciples for sleeping, but it says here that they slept for sorrow. They watched Jesus long enough to know that He was in agony and yet there was nothing they could do to stop the suffering. They watched and prayed for a long time, but it had been a long hard week and they were not only exhausted, but confused and most of all full of grief as they watched the suffering of their Master. Something horrible was happening and they were not allowed to do anything except witness it and grieve for the One that they loved. In the end, their brains simply shut down so that they would not have to witness the heartbreak any longer.
(Revelation of God) Jesus was undergoing separation from His Father as He became sin. I think maybe all of our sins are a heavy weight on God, and in this moment, God the Father/Spirit was removing the knowledge of evil from Himself and laying it all upon Jesus (who was also God). Jesus was beginning to endure the utter rejection that the Father felt towards evil. Jesus was becoming a monster full of everything that He Himself abhorred. The agony of separation almost killed Jesus at the beginning of the process because it was so bad, and it did kill Him at the end of the process at the cross because it was still so bad. I am not sure what God did that day, and I probably will never completely understand the whole process that happened, but I know that what happened was more significant than we humans know.
(Application / Prayer) My application for myself is that I have a weakness just like the disciples did and that Jesus does not want my weakness to hurt me. He wants me to pray and maintain that connection to Him so that I have the strength when that weakness confronts me and wants to overwhelm me. Jesus wants to give me the strength and power I need to deal with the horrors that I will face on this earth. Jesus wants me to stay connected to Him so that He can keep me secure, and I won’t have to deal with life alone or in weakness. I just have to maintain that connection with Him through faith. Faith comes by hearing the word of God. I always think of that as reading the scriptures, and it is, but it is also listening for God’s words in prayer and in an attitude of listening. Teach me to hear, have faith, and come to You in my weakness so that You can give me strength.